It’s really magical taking a college course on comedy. Who doesn’t like to laugh? There is much to study about laughter: the sociological reasons why we laugh harder in a group than alone; the physiology of descending into a giggling fit that won’t stop; the psychology in Freud’s joke triad of joke telling, joke listening, and joke being the butt of. To say nothing of how something as sweet-sounding as tickle can be either tender or abusive. Comedy is serious stuff.
Except when you get to choose a topic for your final paper and you decide on the Marx Brothers. Then it’s off to the races, literally, beginning with A Day at the Races followed by A Night at the Opera topped off by my favorite,Duck Soup. In case you’re the age of the clerk at Blockbuster who wasn’t sure who the comedians were or why their work has lived on for a century, I’ll give you this analogy: If the Marx Brothers were the Jacksons, Groucho would be Michael. And so would Harpo and Chico.
Watching the Marx Brothers in action is the closest you’ll get nowadays to experiencing vaudeville. The quick scene changes, scene stealing, pocket picking, face mugging, fake accents, fake accidents, girl chasing – all still frenetic and fresh and funny. The Groucho one-liners are still the prize. In Animal Crackers, Groucho woos two wealthy matrons while being attracted to neither. Smiling charmingly, he says to them, “How happy I could be with either of you if you’d both just go away.” To a stuffy party guest who approaches him with, “Haven’t we met before?” Groucho says, “I don’t think so. I’m not even sure I’m seeing you now.” Like ‘em? Here’s more:
I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.
She got her looks from her father. He’s a plastic surgeon.
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.
I don’t have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They’re upstairs in my socks.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
The musical numbers are either corny or hilarious. My favorites are the Groucho anthems with titles that tell you all you need to know: “Everyone Says I Love You,” “Hello, I Must Be Going,” Whatever It Is, I’m Against It.” A week after watching Animal Crackers, I’m still humming “Hooray for Captain Spaulding.” I also enjoy the inside jokes inserted by writers too smart by a mile. In Horse Feathers, the central plot involves a college football game between Huxley College and its rival, Darwin College. Historically speaking, Thomas Henry Huxley was a defender of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Similarly, the song “Hooray for Captain Spaulding” was a sly reference to a real Captain Spaulding, an army officer arrested several years earlier for selling cocaine to Hollywood residents.
The best part, every bit as good as how talented they were, is the fact that they were friends as well as brothers. They were generous onstage and onscreen, giving each other equal chances to get the laugh. Groucho could be the straight man in one scene and the joker in the next, never hesitant to make himself the joke. It was Groucho who Woody Allen famously quoted as saying, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.” No sense arguing with him about it. He’d only say, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them. . . well, I have others.”
Daughter’s Featured Fotos present Precision
balanced sound
googly-eyed
paper dress
spoon umbrella